ECC Family Project: Grocery Shopping at a Food Bank

Then my teacher lightbulb switched on. I quickly saw all the ECC skills that could easily be infused into this idea and I knew that I had another family project for you. I have designed this idea for children of all abilities and families of all types. 

Here's another great Expanded Core family project: grocery shopping for a food bank. I'll be honest, this is another idea that comes straight from my own life. I read an article about our local food banks and there was a profile about the families who are receiving their support. I was quite struck by this as it reminded me that for most of my childhood I was a recipient of support. I decided to look up their needed items. I made a commitment that every time I go grocery shopping this year, I will pick items to support the local food bank. 

Part one--food bank research 

 As a family, look up your local food bank and learn about it. You can be as detailed as you need to meet your child where they are. Learn about what food banks are and what needs they have. I also encourage you to have your child call the food bank and conduct an interview. You will find out what specific needs your local bank has and it works conversation skills. 

•  For moderate to typically developing students, have them use their tech skills and go online. Have them do the search on a device. I suggest a laptop so that everyone can read along with them (but you do what works for you!). 
• For symbolic level students, use real life simple pictures of a building. Use simplified language ("This is a food bank."). You can go to the site https://www.remove.bg/ and it will remove the background of a visually chaotic picture for free!

Gather your information from your research. You can have your child be the speaker (they call the food bank),  the researcher (they go online) or the secretary (they write the details and the shopping list). You can assign these responsibilities out to members of your family (this teaches career education). 

Find the food bank address in your community. Have a quick discussion about the location of the food bank (after you researched the address). Consider these questions: is the food bank in a residential place? Is it in a strip mall? Go on a map and look at the street. Is it located on a busy street or main road or a side street? Does it have a stoplight controlled intersection. This quick discussion infuses orientation and mobility skills. 

Part two-grocery shopping skills 

You have two options for this part. You can go to the grocery store or you can order groceries online. 

For both options, start with a grocery list. You can have this in Braille, large print or pictures. 

• Option A:You can have a bit of fun with this part if you have the time. Start with your grocery list and play a type of the price is right with it. I do this a lot with students and it is super fun. Ask everyone to make a guess of how much items cost. This lets you know how much knowledge your child has about money skills. Then move onto grocery shopping. 
• Option B: get right to grocery shopping. For in person grocery shopping, infuse AT skills by using an app such as Seeing AI or Be My Eyes. Divide your family into teams and work on the list together. Do not just put your child at the back of the cart and drag them around the store. Keep your child actively participating by giving them a specific task. For symbolic level students, give them pictures of what they are looking for. Let them put the item in the cart. 

For online shopping, turn JAWS on so everyone knows what's going on. Your child may be inexperienced with online shopping so be partners in this effort. **If you feel overwhelmed, do this: think of one thing your child CAN do for this and one thing you STOP doing for this. It will give you some direction.

For both in person or online shopping, the payment section is a good place for your child to be actively engaged. You can use paper bills--more ideal for students who have multiple impairments or teach about using a card. I try to make sure that my students have both the card reader experience at a self- checkout and with a cashier. Go at a dead time so you don't feel rushed. 

Last but never least, do the best you can! I've had so many grand ideas fail miserably when executed in real time. The focus is a family activity that helps the community. Pay attention to how your child does--are they way off with prices? Do they seem to not have strong internet skills? Do they not know much about grocery stores? Make some notes. Then call your teacher of students with vision impairments or OM instructor to work a plan to develop these skills. Pay attention to yourself--how much did you really help your child during these activities? Did you overpower during the lesson? All children can do something. Step back and let them do things before you jump in to help (easier said than done!). 

Can you imagine if just twenty families did this activity? We would help our local communities so much! 

ECC Chill Pill Lesson

Happy back to school friends! I know it is crazy right now but we can still provide meaningful Expanded Core instruction for our students. Check out this fun idea: make chill pills with students. Huh? I'm sure you have seen this fun idea floating around on Pinterest or other craft places. You can take this fun idea and infuse a TON of ECC learning and skills practice for students of various abilities. 

 I referenced our ECC assessments (you should do this, too!)
Here's a few of my ideas of how you can infuse ECC learning:

Community learning: what is a pharmacy? learn about employees that work there--what are their titles? Research different types of pharmacies and locations. Plot a bus/walking route. What are items you can get a pharmacy? Over the counter vs prescription? Safety measures with medication

Social/emotional: review why someone would need to take a "chill pill", what does it mean to "chill out". You can review emotions and healthy ways to manage them and express them. I also like to do a mental health toolbox where students learn different ways to manage mental health and then select ideas to build their own coping skills. 

Independent living skills: how do you manage your personal medication? Hygiene is another great topic at this time. How do you open and store medication safely? Use technology to read medication labels. 

Now it's important to remind you that you want to have intentional, meaningful instruction so ponder how you will present this and work through material with students. Don't shove all this information into one lesson! The bonus part is the actual chill pills. We used a mix of Skittles and M&Ms. Another bonus ILS is to review favorite snacks, prices, location of these items, etc. Allow students to mix it up and select their own "pill combinations". 

These make great gifts for others. You may have to stuff them with pre-packaged candies for Covid safety but all in all, it will still work. Last but not least, the label lesson! Teach students what is on a prescription label. We had print and then Braille labels for students. Big shout out to my secretary who assembled these ones! She did a great job. Our students loved them. They were part of our back to school for our residential students. 

Would you like the label to make your own? I'm happy to share! Email me at robbin.keating@gmail.com and I'll get you the template. 

 

ECC Family Project 2

I quite possibly think that this new series is becoming my favorite during this quarantine time. Why? Because I am a mom and I know first-hand how hard it is to manage life! This is a project that kiddos with multiple impairments or typically developing can do with their siblings. 

You only need THREE ingredients and a popsicle mold--easy peasy! I bought these molds in the Dollar Spot at Target awhile back. You can also probably find them at Dollar Tree or order them for a minimal cost. My youngest (she's 6 years old) did the project with minimal support from me. 

The other bonus? It wasn't a marathon long project. We were done (including set up, preparation and clean up) in 15 minutes. Boom! The recipe was a find from Pinterest. Here it is: http://poofycheeks.com/2014/06/jell-o-popsicle-recipe/. Now that we have discovered this one, Pinterest has been awesome to find me a dozen more variations. 

A couple of important notes for maximizing your total Expanded Core learning: 

1. Your child is the one who should be in charge of the set up & clean up (not just the actual cooking). They should pull out the pot for the water, measuring cup, bowl and spoon. This is the part that may take a few extra minutes if they are new to the kitchen scene. Don't do this part with siblings as they tend to be well meaning but give away the answers. Normally I would suggest that your child also buy the Jell-O but we are in a new normal here. Have a quick (seriously--QUICK) discussion on the different flavors of Jell-O if they are new to Jell-O. Talk about the cost (Jell-O and store brand is cheap!).

2. Consider contrast. Notice that I selected dark blue. It is easy to see. If your child has no vision, consider using a tray with all of the ingredients to keep things organized. 

3. If your child has limitations such as multiple impairments, think about how they can actively participate. That's different than being totally independent. Can they hold the box? Open it? Can they stir? You can discuss hot and cold, empty and full concepts easily. Are they very limited with their hands? No worries--go hand-under-hand with them. Not sure how? Watch this super quick and awesome video: https://www.wsdsonline.org/hand-under-hand/ (watch Daniel Makes A Smoothie). 

4. Let them use the stove! The easiest thing you can do on a stove is boil water. Highlight how you know water is boiling without seeing it. You can hear it! 

5. Put your child in charge of cleaning up! That includes wiping down the counter. 

I have to admit that I was a little nervous about how my little one was going to pour the mix into the containers. I have a small one cup measuring cup. We simply dunked the cup in the mix and then poured it. She did it all by herself. ECC bonus skills: pouring! No vision? No worries! Don't let your child put their finger in (we do discourage it but sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do). Try having them feel the outside of the container while they pour. The water is hot and you can feel it fill up the container. BEFORE they pour have them indicate with their finger where the top of the mold is. This way you know that they know where the top is. 

Freeze for a few hours and enjoy! I didn't add as much sugar as the recipe called for but you can do whatever works for your family. NOTE: for kids with multiple impairments, really play up the temperature aspects of this. There are repeated opportunities to talk about hot and cold. You could easily make a new recipe with a new flavor each week. Once you master these, you can rank up and try the fruit ones with fresh fruit and coconut milk. Go for it! 

Support Independence for Students with Vision Impairments with a Teacher Feedback Group

Are you loving our mugshots? These are some of the awesome people on our team getting into our new teacher feedback group. Back story: we have some new teachers, veteran teachers and new staff that struggle with knowing when and how to step back to support our students with their independence. It's a common problem. It's often an unconscious problem. People don't realize how much they are impeding our students. My team has good intentions. They have hearts of gold and they work hard but we make the same mistake: impeding independence. 

I wanted to continue to give my team feedback but I didn't want it to feel punitive or create a negative environment. Giving citations is a popular strategy for students in general education. Sometimes they are called "speeding tickets". This inspired this idea!  

I wanted to do something that I could get teacher buy in with. I created the (above pictured) "independence violation". Teachers could observe each other and cite them when they are impeding independence of our students. We all know these offenses: carrying their books, helping them open containers, serving them food, getting them whatever and not making them get up---the list could go on and on. I needed us to get present about this hinderance. We aren't doing students ANY favors by doing so many things for them especially our students who are completely blind. They don't pick up on the incidental learning. They need all these little opportunities for independence.
Again, I wanted something that empowers teachers. Feedback for instruction helps with this. But it can go wrong if not handled the right way. People can be sensitive. Fortunately my staff and I have a collaborative environment and we support each other. But....I still wanted to have fun with this. Enter my funny officer and our mugshots! The team got where I was going with this and everyone jumped on board. 

Important: I didn't want to just do negative call outs or citations. I wanted teachers to develop to learn how to give meaningful feedback. I added a section to the citation ticket that says "rectify the offense". This allows us to shift from the violation to a solution. We created a bulletin board where we post our citations/solutions and once a month we get together and review them.
We have loved this idea and the positive outcomes are far reaching. Teachers are now going to be more aware of their interactions with students. Teachers will find new solutions for how to step back. Want a copy of my citation? Send me an email and I'm happy to share. Try this out with everyone--parents, teachers and paraprofessionals. We included everyone (even my secretary) on this! Anyone who has interactions with our students was included. We are hoping our feedback group will help us move from villains to heroes! 

Your New Favorite Read: Blind Ambitition

Hi everyone! My name is Frankie Ann and I am a legally blind, twenty-something who is just trying to live her best blind life! And this is Blind Ambition- a weekly blog column where I will be sharing Accessibility Tips, Expanded Core Curriculum Hacks, Skills for Advocacy, Personal successes, struggles, and so much more!

Here’s a little bit about me! I was born with septo-optic dysplasia which is a really fancy way to say that my optic nerves are underdeveloped. I have poor distance vision (20/400 in my left eye and 20/800 in my right) no peripheral vision (tunnel vision), no depth perception, severe light sensitivity, degrees of night blindness, slight nystagmus, and a partial astigmatism. Mix that all together and you get me: a large print reader (24 print Arial bold font for the win) and partial cane user (at night and in excessively crowded or unfamiliar environments) who has spent her life trying her best to adapt to every situation that comes her way and never back down from a challenge!

I met Robbin back in 2010. At the time, i was going through a serious hard time coping with my vision impairment. I was just about to turn sixteen and while all of my other friends were getting hyped up to get their driver’s licenses, I got my very first white cane and was taking street crossing classes with my Orientation and Mobility instructor.  I felt totally lost, insecure, and frankly embarrassed by my vision impairment. But Robbin helped me to see past all that- both literally and figuratively! She taught me that it’s not about what I could see, but about what I could do. Once that seed was planted, everything changed!

Though my final high school and college years had their fair share of challenges and hard times, i was equipped with a new found confidence and pride in my self that helped me to rise above and keep pushing through. That confidence helped me to make the decision to leave my home in Connecticut and move to the biggest, busiest, and most visually overstimulating city in the country- New York City! My hope is that by sharing my experiences here, I may be able to help other blind/visually impaired individuals work through their own struggles, find solutions to their challenges, learn that they are DEFINITELY not alone, and chase their dreams!

I am so excited to be launching Blind Ambition! Each week will cover an aspect of living life with a vision impairment. Stay tuned next week for our first topic: “Vision Statements: How Do You Explain Your Vision Impairment to Someone who is Sighted or Just Doesn’t Get It?” In the meantime, follow my Instagram @blindambitionblog for daily posts about Accessibility, Advocacy, and more!

Thanks for reading! I can’t wait to keep sharing with you!

Stay Ambitious,

Frankie Ann

Teach the ECC at a Home Improvement Store

Hello friends! I am finally getting around to blogging about one of my favorite places in the community for Expanded Core instruction: a home improvement store! Yep, like Lowe's or The Home Depot. These stores a treasure box of skills, experiences and learning opportunities. There are many options for doing community based instruction (CBI) at a home improvement store. I recommend doing it as a series. This means you come back several times and break up the store into smaller parts. I like this option because there is more opportunity for students to have a stronger connection to the concepts. After all, there's much to learn, see, touch and do at a big home improvement store. The pictures from this post are part of a two part series I did. We did some work in the classroom and then put it together at the store. Part one was dedicated to learning about tools and basic home improvement around the house. Students learned a lot from the difference between a flathead and a Phillips screwdriver to how to plunge a toilet! Note: I always buy a new plunger and label it so students can touch it and explore it without it being gross! I feel that students should know basics of their home. These areas often get overlooked but it is a valuable skillset. Plan time for this. It's easy to just do a "show and tell" lesson. That's not effective ECC instruction. Use the "I do. We do. Y'all Do. You do." approach for this one! It's okay to break it up into a series of learning as well! 

A home improvement store is also great for a variety of age groups. I brought younger students to high school students for this outing. My younger students had a bonus lesson: they went and explored different textures! There were so many textures for younger hands to find and discuss. We also did a scavenger hunt of shapes, textures, measurement and comparing/contrasting sizes with their group. 

 Plan a few hours for an ECC CBI--even if you are breaking it up in a series. There are many departments that have lots of hands on exploration even for older students. Check out the picture below with all the different faucets! We had lots of discussions about student's preferences, uses and locations of just faucets!

 I brought a medium sized group of students for this outing. I broke them up into small groups and gave them an "educational scavenger hunt" (aka a creative list of things I want them to learn about). Each group had time to go about the store at their own pace. They had to check out major departments and apply their new "tool knowledge" to each department. Can you see all the possibilities?? We spent almost an entire day on our home improvement unit.

 There's another reason why I like doing ECC lessons at a home improvement store: the appliance section! Many students haven't had the opportunity to check out a variety of appliances. Their knowledge is usually just their own home appliances. I like to do a whole lesson about accessible appliances. I like to review what makes an appliance accessible. I give the students a checklist of accessible options to consider and tell them to find these options on appliances. I encourage them to learn about their own accessibility needs. Then look for appliances that match their needs. Note: I don't rush this lesson. We go appliance by appliance---we do laundry first, then kitchen, etc. I let students discover features of appliances.

Don't forget to talk about the money! We also discuss prices and budgets. I kind of like to play "The Price is Right" for this. I have students take a guess at how much appliances cost including their dream accessible appliances. Fortunately, many of the most accessible appliances are the most basic ones. We compare and contrast pricier models with basic. We discuss all the bells and whistles. It's such a great ECC lesson!! 

 Make sure you go during off hours if possible. It makes it easier to have "department to yourself". You can do a lot more instruction without everyone staring at you. The workers are usually awesome to work with. Many employees will take extra time and really help out where possible.

 I have students pack their assistive technology (that includes their phones) for this CBI. I like them to use their AT when determining what accessibility they need. Feel free to invite an orientation & mobility instructor as well for this one. There's so much to gain on this ECC adventure!

Spring & Easter ECC Activities

Happy spring! Spring season bring holidays like Easter and a lot of fun opportunities for Expanded Core instruction. Check out some quick, fun and easy to do ECC spring activities. The bonus: you can do these for Easter, too!

Let's start with Easter. One of the most difficult parts of traditional Easter activities is the egg hunt. Many people have adopted the beeping eggs or using balloons on strings. Those are great ideas and I have done them. The problem I ran into with the balloons is that it ended up being super windy and the balloons were blowing around everywhere--gah! The beeping eggs are nice but what do you do if you have students with hearing impairments, in wheelchairs or have under developed sound location skills? That's what I was thinking about this year when putting together our Spring Carnival. 

I was in Walmart gathering supplies when I saw a clearance bin with these colorful, soft and lightweight "egg looking" pillows---yes! They were only $2.50--score! I purchased a handful of these pillows. I knew that they would be perfect "eggs" for many of my students. They are easy to see, fun to touch and lightweight to hold. Yes! They were such a hit! The students used them in so many ways. I made sure that I bought a red one for some of my CVI students. I have many students who use gait trainers, walkers, etc. Check out my Instagram--9MoreThanCore to watch how some of my students used it. 

I also purchase "large print" eggs for $1 because they are easy to see.

That wasn't the only egg hunt we had. Who say you have to have just one egg hunt when we have students of all different abilities and interests?! My kids have participated in lots of family egg hunts where each child is assigned a color or a sticker for their designated egg. I took that idea and put my ECC thinking cap on. Again, what is an egg hunt that my students can fully interact with? 

I assigned students based on small groups (small classroom sizes) a designated color egg. The big eggs were hung on walls for the hunt. Each classroom looks for multiple eggs of the same color that are mounted to the wall. Each classroom is designated a spring decoration (i.e. bee, flower, polka dot) and will decorate their eggs as they find them. The decorations were in buckets. Students matched their color to their egg and bucket. We used Braille labels on both buckets and eggs for literacy purposes and for students who have no vision.

It worked out great! Students still did an egg hunt but we packed in a lot of other bonus skills. I considered popular IEP goals (scanning, matching, fine motor skills) and infused them into this and the other activities for meaningful instruction. They were also easy and inexpensive to make! I used poster board from Dollar Tree. I bought a white poster board and used a shiny wrapping paper for one color. They were nice and bright and easy to see. (We laminated them so we can use them again!). We used die cuts for decorations and painters tape for easy application. 

Another fun activity was the gardening station. This was a mix of live plants, artificial plants/flowers and gardening tools. I headed to Walmart nursery clearance rack. I wanted crocus flowers because they are super fragrant. I also nabbed some oregano and parsley for their scent and textures. 

I found a great idea from Pinterest for the sensory play component. I picked up some black beans and filled some containers to have "dirt". Bright color artificial flowers provided great contrast. 

Target Dollar Spot had some great cheap finds! I purchased kids gardening gloves, gardening tools and fun rocks. They also had some fun carrots and veggies that were soft. You can easily open the seam and fill them with some weights to give them a little bit more weight for sensory feedback. (We had the same idea for the spring friends!).  Dollar Tree had these awesome carrot eggs. I filled them with different amounts of beans for shaker eggs. I found a super cute bee and lady bug decoration from At Home which added to the garden table.

I always love having a motor activity. I created some motor movements that all my students could do (wheelchairs, supported standers or independent standers). I also added numbers on dowels. Students selected a motor skill and a number. Our PE teacher ran the activity. 

We had a spring dress up station with all kinds of fun items. Why? We had a parade! A parade infused some fun ECC skills. It was fun to watch students dress up with all kinds of decorations. We worked some fun social skills with smiling and waiving in our parade (very simple parade so we can focus on skills). 

 A lot of my students enjoy music so the spring friends table was just the table for them! I found these fun spring friends that dance and move. I also went to the baby section and found super soft bunnies and a large turtle. Again, you can open the seams and add some weight to provide more sensory feedback. 

 You don't need to save these activities for Easter. These are spring activities you can do do throughout spring! Plus, buying these right after Easter gives you a nice savings to your wallet.